Zigbee devices and HA – my experience

ZBBridge-U
2

Your tests are useful, but a few points mix different integration layers, so let me clarify them to avoid misleading other readers.

  1. Raw identifiers in MQTT
    Topics based on Zigbee addresses (0x3c2ef5fffebafc44) are normal.
    Friendly names exist only inside Home Assistant, not in MQTT - so renaming devices in HA does not change the MQTT topic structure.

  2. homeassistant/…/config topics
    These are part of HA’s standard autodiscovery mechanism, not “extra noise”.
    Every integration that wants automatic entity creation must publish them. Zigbee2MQTT structures them differently, hence the mismatch.

  3. Different entity structure compared to Z2M
    ZBBridge‑U does not replicate Zigbee2MQTT’s model.
    It exposes entities according to its own API, so some automations need adjustments - that’s expected, not a bug.

  4. Limited support for third‑party devices
    Agreed - the firmware still lacks a broad device database, so some products fall back to “generic” behavior. This should improve as the firmware matures, I believe.

  5. Same “payload noise” appears in NSPanel Pro
    This is identical to what I saw with NSPanel Pro: lots of automatically published payloads that clutter HA more than they help. I eventually disabled MQTT publishing on the panel because the noise outweighed the value.

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